[SECProto]

>No, but there's such thing as a "somewhat objective album ranking".

What objective criteria do you think should be used to do the ranking? Number of chord progressions used? Variety of instruments on the album? Lingual diversity? Or maybe the inverse of one of these criteria would be better? Point being, even choosing an evaluation criteria is subjective.

The only semi-objective criteria I can think of would be the number of other albums/musicians it influenced - but this is basically a meta-ranking.

Aside, for the record, I wouldn't have Sgt Pepper anywhere near my top ten "greatest albums", but What's Goin On and Pet Sounds can stay.

[coldtea]

See my answer above.

A good critic does a subjective assessment, but also understands things like the place of a work within the larger history of the medium, it's relative importance, how influential it has been, several skills involved (not necessarily technical "playing" skill - skills in e.g. emotional resonanse or expression or production, etc are good to judge too), and so on.

And whetever the fashion of 2010-2020, they wouldn't put "Let's Get In On" as the #1 in a 500 Greatest Albums of all time list.

This looks more like a too-little-too-late "let's have RS show some hypocritical allegiance with the black movement and the whole hoopla in 2020" calculated ranking, than actual consideration of the relative merits of the work.

[geocanuck]

the objective criteria is beauty/ugliness. there is partial subjectivity in determination of "rank" past this distinction. hence "semi-objective"

[CydeWeys]

Beauty is the canonical example of a subjective criterion. There's even a well-known phrase about this you've probably heard: "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder", a phrase so old and time-tested that it predates Christianity by several centuries.

It's hard to even make sense of what you're saying because you're using words in exactly the opposite manner that everyone else uses them and thus only offering up contradictions, which are by definition already false.

[geocanuck]

I disagree. Beauty is a transcendental attribute of being. As such, it is not contingent upon cultural diversity, religious doctrine, or personal ideology, but is an objective property of all that exists.

[SECProto]

> the objective criteria is beauty/ugliness

So Sgt Pepper is beautiful? What makes it so?

[coldtea]

>So Sgt Pepper is beautiful? What makes it so?

For one thing, it captured a place/era almost perfectly (as agreed by tons of people in that place/era - including fellow musicians).

Second, it has the height of maturity of what was considered the most important band of all time (and close to such as seen by both the critics and commercial success).

Third, it unarguably has considerable skill in several areas (melody, harmony, orchestration, playing, etc).

Fourth, it was largely influencial.

Fifth, most experts (critics, rock musicians, etc) agreed so for half a century.

Those things are enough to call it beautiful in mind book.

Just because we can't measure something (e.g. beauty here) with some technical instrument doesn't mean it doesn't exist, or people can't agree on it.

[geocanuck]

i was going for an explanation of how art and aesthetics are not purely subjective. and how one could arrive at the statement "semi-objective ranking". so im not arguing "Sgt. Pepper is beautiful" im arguing "there is objectivity in art therefore some art is better than other art" thus implying some form of objective "ranking". nonetheless, ill try to answer what makes something (in this case music) beautiful. there are many different explanations that converge on similar concepts/ideas.

in many traditions, ranging from Chinese philosophy to the ancient Greeks, beauty is associated with goodness, virtue, and truth. particularly of the Greeks, there was an emphasis on its relation to mathematics, namely proportion and symmetry. aesthetic considerations like symmetry/asymmetry, simplicity/complexity are utilized in mathematics, physics and cosmology to define truth (or lack thereof).

the Thomistic view is that: A) beauty is a transcendental (a Platonic view) and B)that there are 3 conditions: 1. integritas (wholeness, integrity, perfection) 2. consonatia (harmony and proportion) 3. claritas (radiance/clarity that makes apparent the form to the mind, analogous to processing fluency)

The definition of beauty thus converges on the idea that: something is beautiful when it is harmonious, complete, and clear. something beautiful is virtuous, good and true. you could also argue this as "in accordance with natural order" as the natural order is complete, clear, and harmonious (and thus beautiful). you could go further with this idea and argue that beauty is "of God" or "in accordance with God" or "in accordance with the Logos". but that is a different argument for a different time.

art is the field of human interest whose ideal is beauty. therefore, it follows that beautiful art is complete (has integrity, wholeness), is harmonious (perhaps in accordance with natural world i.e. proportions such as golden ratio, etc. this is not limiting), and is clear (the form is readily made apparent to the mind, i.e. high processing fluency, the information is easily processed)

Does Sgt. Pepper fit this criteria? Is it beautiful?